Tuesday, January 29, 2008

360 Degrees

Panorama Backpacker a0.85

Panorama Backpacker is a great application for those who’d like to visit breathtaking places around the world with just a mouse click. This sounds more like a desktop wallpaper program, but it isn’t; you can actually view entire landscapes as if you were there.
Using Apple’s QuickTime virtual Reality Technology (QTVR); you can look anywhere you like when viewing places of astounding natural beauty. To top it all off, you can even listen to ambient sounds that come along with the panoramic view.
The program offers world map search, panorama list search, browsing of more than 240 panoramas with widescreen view, and content auto-update. The panoramic views have helpful bits of information about the country, city, and story and also the year it was shot in.
The software weighs less than 6 MB but requires QuickTime QTVR and also Java VM to be installed for it to work, which can easily add up to 50 MB more to download from their respective sites. Also, the different views need to be downloaded each time you try to access them, which can take a considerable amount of time. You need a broadband connection for this.

For: Polished look, beautiful views.
Against: No way to download the panoramas separately.

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